May 21, 2014

Apple Extends Master Agreement with Liquidmetal Technologies

On Monday Apple and Liquidmetal Technologies, Inc., entered into a second Master Transaction Agreement that extends Apple's exclusive license for creating consumer electronic products based on IP shared with a subsidiary called Crucible Intellectual Property until Q1 2015. On many of Crucible's patent applications or granted patents today you'll either see Apple as one of the assignees or an Apple engineer listed as one of the inventors. One of the more consistent inventors found listed on these patents is none other than Apple's engineer Christopher Prest. Our report shows you a copy of the key part of the agreement between Apple and Liquidmetal Technologies along with a full up-to-date listing of Crucible Intellectual Property patents for your review.

The Agreement

The first agreement between these two companies was signed on August 05, 2010. The second agreement was signed on Monday May 20, 2014 as noted below.

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The agreement specifically points to importance of "Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC as follows: 'Under the MTA and the First Amendment, the Company was obligated to contribute to Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC, a special purpose subsidiary of the Company, all intellectual property acquired or developed by the Company from August 5, 2010 through February 5, 2014, and all intellectual property held by Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC was exclusively licensed on a perpetual basis to Apple for the field of use of consumer electronic products under the MTA."

The 16 Crucible Intellectual Property Patent Applications

At this moment there are 16 patent applications that are listed under Crucible Intellectual Property by the US Patent and Trademark Office as follows:

The number one granted patent that is missing from the list above is that Titled "Counter-gravity casting of hollow shapes" under number 8,701,742. It's a patent that fulfills the agreement in that Apple contributed to this invention under Crucible which allows them to use this technology or invention for use with a consumer electronics product.

That patent opens the door to a killer December patent application from Apple regarding hollow structures like a future iPhone design. This was also covered last month. Over the years Patently Apple has covered many liquid metal or bulk metallic glasses related patents that you can search for on our site. Here are a few of them: One, two and three.

Although a recent Apple patent strongly suggested that the iPhone has been one of the products using liquid metal, Apple has yet to verify or confirm the use of this material in a straight forward manner in any of its literature.

Apple signing an extension to their Master Agreement with Liquidmetal Technologies tells us that there's been enough progress made working with this material to warrant this extension. However the limiting timeframe is a mystery. Does Apple need this time to prepare their first big-bang product using this material? Only time will tell.

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